Tomislav Babic

Best of the early 80s, Curtis chip -based polyphonics i.e. utlizing the famous 33x0 serie chips. love using it for sizzley buzzy cem pads/strings, voxy high resonance dark pads. it limited but sounds bigger than life. 12dB filter is its characteristic trademark tone. 24dB setting is not bad but i don't use it as often.

most organic polyphonic analog i have ever played. syrupy SSM2040 filter. warm, micro-stochastic sound that is never static. one could make a whole album just with that one board. downside is: unless you have a competent technician, its a maintenance nightmare. mine has spent more time on the bench than being played, due to second rate technicians. luckily, after it went to Steffan Huebner in Hamburg, it works perfect. also had Kenton Midi installed. its been stable for past three years, knock on wood. famous albums where it was prominently used: Tangerine Dream: Tangram (1980) & Exit (1981), Peter Gabriel III (1980), Phil Collins: Face Value (1981), Genesis: Duke (1979-1980, Japan: Gentlemen Take Polaroids (Riuchi Sakamoto's unit).

perhaps my favorite polyanalog of them all. majestic tone. phenomenal user interface. while flexible it has insane sweet spot. its impossible to make it sound bad.

Wave 2 is ultra rare, early 80s predecessor of famous Wave 2.2 and 2.3 that came into spotlight with synth pop acts like Ultravox, Depeche and later Propaganda, Aha and many others. its one of the white rhinos of the synth world, with less than 200 made. while 2.2 and 2.3 sport an SSM2044 filter and somewhat sweeter synth poppy "synthesizer-y" sound, Wave 2 has more clang and raw lofi hybrid tone and sports CEM3320 filter, which imo works much better shaping metallic digital oscillators than 2044 (i have the Wave 2.3 as well). another crucial difference is, its pitch change algorithm is different from later PPGs. they sport phase accumulator technique, whereas Wave 2 has divide-by-n and as such has virtually no aliasing. all the dirt up there is harmonically related to the fundamental pitch. therefore instead of glassy aliased top end of 2.2/2.3 it has pure top, with waves sounding as it you replayed them on magnetic tape with higher speed, so to speak. its magical sound graced the monumenthal, seminal electronic album from Tangerine Dream, Exit (1981), with skewed female vox leads, bells, strange jazz guitar leads, vibes etc. you can also hear it on canadian progrockers second album, Saga: Worlds Apart (1981) and Depeche Mode's Broken Frame (1982). i have searched for this machine for more than 25 years and it will probably be burried with me ;)